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I got a Polaroid Land SX-70 off eBay. Loaded up a pack of Impossible film and started testing it.

Looks like its light meter is a little off as all my shots came overexposed.

I tested using my usual models and following some advice from my resident photographer and the super nice people of Vintage Instant and somewhere between the first and eighth shot I found myself so fascinated by the camera that I even went and read about its history. And watched old commercials of it.

But I guess my favorite moment was when after driving for two and a half hours I stood with sand beneath my toes and snapped the last of my first Impossible PX70 film shots. And this was the result.

Just like Laurence Olivier said: “And then, the Impossible happens.” I smiled all the way home.

It was a tiny little camera. It took tiny pictures. That you could stick on things, if you got the sticky film. (The pictures were as small as post stamps.)

For a whole year I looked for the version of it that was also digital.* Never found it. I shot a few films with it. They were kind of expensive.

By the time I could afford more film, they stopped making it. It stayed in the closet, as new. The other day I turned it on and it even made the sound that its flash was warming up.(I had forgotten to take out the batteries.)

Which is more productive than what I was previously doing: watching too many old episodes of The Big Bang Theory.*

Which is really how I remembered that once, a long time ago when I worked in L.A. I was on a photo assignment at Saks in Pasadena, and on the way to the car I stopped and took some non-work related pictures.

Ah, Kodak, you made good films. I always liked how they were way less green than Fuji. We had some good times. I hope you won’t die like Polaroid.